


Her Name.

by greylina



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-23 02:56:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13778178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greylina/pseuds/greylina
Summary: Her name is a memory that is not his, a fact falsely given to him.





	Her Name.

“My name.”

Is a whisper along the beach, on a day where the sun is high but the breeze is cool. The rumble of ocean water, the verdigris lapping at golden sun kissed sands, pushing forward and receding just as quickly. Her name is a memory that is not his, a fact falsely given to him, but his, now, nonetheless. It has been scratched into his memory, etched and printed permanently, and the walls of his mind have welcomed it home.

“What about it?” He hums.

“I never told you what it was when we were still at PFL.”

There is an accusation somewhere there. He knows there is, catches on it quick, and were he younger the panic that flares in his head would show in his face. But he is older, he is tired, and the lines on his face remain unchanged. Unchanged, even as he remembers screaming and clawing and begging for things to stop. These are memories that do not belong to him, memories of a name that is not _David,_ not _Washington,_ and not even _Epsilon_.

He looks at her and knows she is looking at him, and her eyes are the same curious and intense emerald he remembers - he _knows._ There is a hardness in them that must have developed when her age could still be counted with two hands. Seven fingers, small and smooth and uncalloused by grief. They belong to a girl with dirty blonde hair and a toothy grin that doesn’t quite match with the sadness in her eyes.

“Lynn Alice Church.” He says in a voice that doesn’t feel like his. There’s a lilt, an accent he doesn’t remember developing.

“David.” Is said sternly, seriously. She looks at him with a face that demands answers, a no bullshit sort of look that he realizes she developed when she was young. There’s a comment that catches at the top of his throat, something he can’t say, he doesn’t have the right to say. It’s a comment that refuses to say goodbye, so it chokes on him, takes his breath away - It’s daring him to tell her: _You look just like your mother._

“We never really got down to talk about it, I guess. I got wheeled away, you died.” Is what he says instead, the wheeze that leaves him a painful excuse for laughter. She knows this, and the twitch of her arm makes him wonder if she wanted to reach out. Wanted to hold his hand. He certainly remembers holding hers.

She is quiet, her eyes now looking away from him and at empty space. There’s something about her expression that makes him think of quiet dinners on Saturday nights. The late night news is on, talking about a war and the casualties of it. The quiet gathering of plates, the footsteps that are his,  _but not his,_ leaving. He looks away, pointedly choosing to stare at the wall behind her. No memories play there, and for a moment, he is allowed peace.

“Each AI had its own attribute.” He thinks it strange how good she is at making things sound like both a question and a statement. He never knows when she wants him to answer when she talks like this. “Epsilon is- He’s the Director’s memories.”

Grief is what he would call it. But he doesn’t say that, doesn’t say anything. He just nods, shrugging. The wall is white, the wall is quiet.

He dares a glance at her.

Something clicks in her, he guesses, because she has a face that he _actually_ knows, a memory that is _his_ from a spaceship named Mother of Invention. Her brows are low, her lips a careful upward curl. It’s an expression he’s only seen a handful of times, when he was still a rookie and in the background, with her. When he stood near her, choosing the back, choosing to watch. Because of what he truly remembers of her, he remembers the careful gaze of a leader, of a friend. Of someone who had yet to be broken by leaderboards and fragments.

“You probably only have the bad ones,” She says, carefully. Because _Agent Carolina_ is careful despite her recklessness. She is careful despite her fire. But Agent Carolina is a name she adopted, a name she uses to pull away from painful memories from a childhood full of neglect and loneliness.

Then she looks at him, the same green eyes he’s known for so, _so_ long, and there’s something different. Something new he _doesn’t_ know, and he realizes for a brief moment that this is Lynn Alice Church he is looking at - just not the same one in his unearned memories.

She starts speaking again, words lost to him but still painting images that make him realize her childhood is not only just neglect and loneliness. She tells him of moments of happiness and pride, her first medals, her first concert, her first kiss. She tells him of her high school sweetheart, a sweet girl who gave her a run for her money because she was just as fast as her on the track. She tells him of the first teacher she cared about, an elderly man who pulled her aside one day to ask her how she was doing, and if she ever considered joining the track team. Why? Because there was no way in hell she managed to walk across the massive high school campus to get to his class in the god awful two minutes in between classes.

She tells him of her first pets - her only pets - who weren’t really hers because they were the town strays. But they loved her anyway, purring loudly as they waited on the mailbox in the afternoon when she’d be coming home. She tells him about the first time she snuck out of her house, at what she guessed to be two in the morning, to run away with the boy next door to the impromptu concert their mutual friend was holding in the town park.

At some point she starts laughing, and he finds himself lost in between memories, confused and happy and laughing too.

He looks at her again, looking through nearly shut eyes, and realizes that the memories he has of her are not meant to be pitied. He sees her completely anew, a person of her own accord who never let anything crush her until it was the end of the world.

“Your name,” He says, suddenly, breathless.

And she laughs again, rolling her eyes at him.

“I know what it is.”


End file.
